(NewsNation) — A U.S. appeals court is scheduled to hear oral arguments this fall over challenges to a law that would ban TikTok in the United States if ByteDance, its China-based parent company, fails to divest from it.
Under a law signed by President Joe Biden in April as part of a larger foreign aid package, ByteDance has a Jan. 19, 2025, deadline to sell TikTok to an approved buyer.
A ban wouldn’t mean the app would be automatically removed from people’s phones. Instead, it means that it would be taken off Apple and Google’s app stores, so users would not be able to download it, get updates, security patches, or bug fixes, rendering it unusable over time.
What’s next in the Tiktok lawsuits?
About a month after the legislation potentially banning the app was OK’d by the president, TikTok and ByteDance filed a lawsuit saying the move unfairly singles out the platform and is an unprecedented attack on free speech. A group of TikTok creators did the same, writing that the law is “unconstitutionally overbroad” and lacks “any conceivable legitimate interest that would warrant shuttering an entire media platform used by millions,” according to The Hill.
ByteDance, TikTok and the creators have to file legal briefs by Thursday, while the Department of Justice has until July 26. Reply briefs are due by Aug. 15, according to Reuters. A hearing in front of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia is set for Sept. 16.
“The government cannot ban a medium for communication because it believes that medium is used to transmit foreign ‘propaganda’ or other protected content,” the creators’ lawsuit said. “Nor does the government have any actual, non-speculative evidence that banning TikTok in its current form enhances Americans’ data security, or that its ban is narrowly tailored to accomplish that objective.”
TikTok, meanwhile, argued that “qualified divestiture” is “simply not possible: not commercially, not technologically, not legally,” and it therefore would lead to a shutdown of the app in the U.S., cutting off millions of daily users, The Hill reported.
Both TikTok and the Justice Department have asked for a Dec. 6 ruling by the appeals court.
What’s next for potential TikTok ban?
A version of the bill passed by the House of Representatives in March gave ByteDance six months to divest from TikTok, but the version ultimately signed by Biden extended this to nine months. If a sale is already in progress, the company gets another three months to complete it, which could push it to April.
Those who supported the law said TikTok, which is owned by a Chinese company, is a risk to national security and could expose sensitive data to a foreign government. Critics of the legislation, though, said the bill unfairly targets TikTok, and that national and data security threats span across the industry, according to The Hill.
The Associated Press, Reuters and NewsNation partner The Hill contributed to this report.
